Conyngham lingered in the crowd, which was orderly enough, and amused himself by noting the credulity of the country folk, until his attention was attracted by a solemn procession passing up the market-place behind the tents. He inquired of a bystander what this might be.
‘It is the police carrying to his apartment the body of Colonel Monreal, who was murdered this afternoon in the Plaza Mayor,’ was the answer.
Conyngham made his way between two tents to the deserted side of the market-place, and, running past the procession, reached the barber’s shop before it. In answer to his summons a girl came to the door of the Colonel’s apartment. She was weeping and moaning in great mental distress.
Without explanation Conyngham pushed past her into the room where he had deposited the letter. The room was in disorder, and no letter lay upon the table.
‘It is,’ sobbed the girl, ‘my husband, who, having heard that the good Colonel had been murdered, stole all his valuables and papers and has run away from me.’
‘Wherein I am false, I am honest—not true to be true.’
‘AND—would you believe it?—there are soldiers in the house, at the very door of Julia’s apartments.’ Señora Barenna, who made this remark, heaved a sigh and sat back in her canework chair with that jerkiness of action which in elderly ladies usually betokens impatience with the ways of young people.
‘Policemen—policemen, not soldiers,’ corrected Father Concha patiently, as if it did not matter much. They were sitting in the broad vine-clad verandah of the Casa Barenna, that grim old house on the Bobadilla road, two miles from Ronda. The priest had walked thither, as the dust on his square-toed shoes and black stockings would testify. He had laid aside his mournful old hat, long since brown and discoloured, and was wiping his forehead with a cheap pocket-handkerchief of colour and pattern rather loud for his station in life.
‘Well, they have swords,’ persisted the lady.
‘Policemen,’ said Father Concha, in a stern and final voice, which caused Señora Barenna to cast her eyes upwards with an air of resigned martyrdom.
‘Ah, that Alcalde!’ she whispered between her teeth.
‘A little dog, when it is afraid, growls,’ said Concha philosophically. ‘The Alcalde is a very small dog, and he is at his wit’s end. Such a thing has not occurred in Ronda before, and the Alcalde’s world is Ronda. He does not know whether his office permits him to inspect young ladies’ love letters or not.’